The bodies of 75 people killed in ethnic clashes in the eastern Congolese city of Bunia during the past week were found in mass graves, a United Nations military observer said on Sunday.
UN peacekeepers found two mass graves on consecutive days, one with 37 bodies on Thursday and one with 38 bodies on Friday, said Colonel Tim Watts, chief of staff of the UN Mission in Congo.
Watts told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that women and children accounted for all but three of the bodies in the first grave and for half of those in the second grave.
”Our observers have counted 75 bodies so far, but there are bound to be more dead,” he said. ”The situation in Bunia is still pretty tense and our observers are unarmed, so it’s difficult for them to go out and check.”
Ugandan troops re-occupied the city on Saturday, bringing a degree of calm, said Watts, but he cautioned: ”There certainly is potential for further bloodshed.”
Bunia is a market city on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It has in the past been controlled by a Congolese rebel faction that was once allied with Uganda.
It has also been a flashpoint for tension between the majority Lendu and minority Hema ethnic groups.
Most of the dead were believed to be Hema and many appeared to have been killed with machetes, Watts said.
Rebels launched a civil war from eastern Congo in 1998, ostensibly to overthrow then-president Laurent Kabila. They were backed by Rwanda and Uganda, but splits emerged in the ensuing years.
The seven countries who entered the war signed a cease-fire in 2000 but many of their troops remain in Congo.
A UN observer mission was deployed throughout the country last year. – Sapa-DPA